Treating the Second Anglo Afghan War Album: Negotiations Between Book and Photograph Conservation

About the Webcast:

About the Lecture:

The Library of Congress “Afghanistan” album, containing 97 albumen prints from the Second Anglo-Afghan war, was severely deteriorated and could not be handled by patrons. Before treatment, conservators Dana Hemmenway and Yasmeen Khan explored the context in which the images were produced, details of the album’s assembly, and the relationship of the album to other albums that document the same events.

In addition to discussing the treatment strategies involved in the conservation of both the binding and the photographic images, the conservators provided a rationale for the removal of two of the largest panoramic photographs from the album. Damage related to the placement of the panoramas in the album necessitated their removal and rehousing alongside the album. To retain the original order of images, digital facsimiles were created to replace the panoramas in their original location.

About the Speakers:

Hemmenway, Khan

Dana Hemmenway graduated from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation with a Masters of Science degree specializing in photographic materials. She came to the Library of Congress in 2003 as a preservation specialist and senior photograph conservator. Dana serves several special collection divisions as liaison for photograph conservation, as well as assisting with the exhibitions program. Before coming to the library, Dana worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House, and The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. Dana has presented at American Institute for Conservation (AIC) meetings on a variety of topics and lectured to college and graduate school students at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Catholic University. She co-teaches a two-day workshop offered by the Society of American Archivists called, “Understanding Photographs.”

Yasmeen Khan has served as a Senior Book Conservator in the Conservation Division of the Library of Congress since 1996. At the Library, she has worked on various projects in both paper and book conservation, as well as serving as a Conservation liaison to the African and Middle Eastern Division. Her main area of interest is Middle Eastern bookbinding and its associated crafts. Prior to LC, she worked and trained in conservation at the Smithsonian Libraries, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin or the Berlin State Library. Yasmeen has an M.L.I.S with an Advanced Certificate in Conservation of Library and Archival Materials from the University of Texas at Austin.